Francesco Borromini Architect, Rome Building Photos, Italian Churches, Baroque Projects Info
Borromini Architecture : Architect
Celebrated Italian Architect from Ticino, Europe – Historic Roman Baroque Buildings
post updated 5 Apr 2021
Borromini – Key Projects
Major Building by architect Francesco Borromini:
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, Italy
Date built: 1638
photo © Adrian Welch
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Beatufiul baroque church famous for its complex interior domes and also for its flowing facade. It features in many histories of World Architecture.
Location: north of the city centre, on the Quirinale hill
In 1634, Borromini received his first major independent commission to design the church, cloister and monastic buildings of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (also known as San Carlino). Situated on the Quirinal Hill in Rome, the complex was designed for the Spanish Trinitarians, a religious order. The monastic buildings and the cloister were completed first after which construction of the church took place during the period 1638-1641 and in 1646 it was dedicated to San Carlo Borromeo.
Sant’Agnese in Agone, Rome, Italy
Francesco was one of several architects involved in the building of the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in Rome. Not only were some of his design intentions changed by succeeding architects but the net result is a building which reflects, rather unhappily, a mix of different approaches.
The Re Magi Chapel of the Propaganda Fide, Rome, Italy
The College of the Propagation of the Faith or Propaganda Fide in Rome includes the Re Magi Chapel by Francesco, generally considered by architectural historians to be one of his most spatially unified architectural interiors.
More Borromini buildings online soon
Francesco Borromini also worked on the following key Roman projects:
St. Peter’s – St Peter’s Basilica Building, Vatican City
photograph © Adrian Welch
Palazzo Barberini, palace building located north of the city centre
image © Adrian Welch
Francesco also worked on the following Roman projects:
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Collegio de Propaganda Fide
Oratorio dei Filippini
Palazzo Falconieri
Palazzo Giustiniani
Palazzo Spada
Sant’Agnese in Agone
Sant’Andrea delle Fratte
San Giovanni in Oleo
Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza
Santa Lucia in Selci
Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori
More architecture information on architect Borromini online soon
Location: Rome, central Italy, southern Europe
Historic Italian Architect Practice Information
Francesco Borromini
Dates: 1599-1667
born in Bissone (Ticino), died in Rome.
he was originally called Francesco Castelli
Famous Baroque architect
Looking up at the ceiling of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane Rome:
Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli (1599 – 1667), was a Swiss architect born in today’s Ticino who, with his contemporaries Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, was a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture.
A keen student of the architecture of Michelangelo and the ruins of Antiquity, Borromini developed an inventive and distinctive, if somewhat idiosyncratic, architecture employing manipulations of Classical architectural forms, geometrical rationales in his plans and symbolic meanings in his buildings. He seems to have had a sound understanding of structures, which perhaps Bernini and Cortona, who were principally trained in other areas of the visual arts, lacked.
His soft lead drawings are particularly distinctive. He appears to have been a self-taught scholar, amassing a large library by the end of his life.
Probably because his work was idiosyncratic, his subsequent influence was not widespread but is apparent in the Piedmontese works of Camillo-Guarino Guarini and, as a fusion with the architectural modes of Bernini and Cortona, in the late Baroque architecture of Northern Europe.
source: Francesco Borromini Architect
Rome Architectural Designs
Rome Architecture Designs – architectural selection below:
Rome Architecture Designs – chronological list
Roman Buildings
photo © Adrian Welch
Historic Architecture
photograph © Adrian Welch
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